For the past few years, various advances in robotics have enabled robots to perform complicated tasks. These tasks include search and rescue, factory automation, precision surgeries, and basic assistance. However, most of the tasks involve well controlled environments that are mapped out in detail and where the problems are very constrained.
One sector in robotics that has not seen a great amount of growth is the assisted living space where a robot would be utilized to cook, clean and organize, serve and fetch items and assist in everyday life. These tasks are extremely important to the ever growing elderly population and the disabled, as they often have difficulty performing some basic, everyday tasks that we take for granted (e.g. getting themselves water to drink). These problems are not only limited to the elderly, since any human could utilize such robots to improve his or her own life.
The main difficulty with the tasks mentioned above has to do with the uncontrolled environments in which the robots would need to operate. These problems boil down to problems with perception, which define the environment for robots operating in the space. The perception problem is very evident in the manipulation of objects, where objects can take on many forms and shapes, as well as be located in many different places. For example, a glass of water can be located in many places and could contain various visual abnormalities (shadows, occlusions, viewpoint, semantic meanings, etc) which make the task of finding the glass difficult for various existing systems.
Even for robotic navigation there are still many challenges despite the fact that modern algorithms have been able to cope with basic navigation in fairly static environments using LIDAR and odometry. For example, an object could appear in front of the robot and the robot would need to understand what the object is in order to decide how to proceed. If robots had good perceptual systems, then they would be able to perform many tasks with extreme precision and in an optimal manner, with better outcomes than humans. For example, a robot would need to know all the locations of the game pieces in chess before computing the most optimal move and moving the correct piece to the appropriate position.
Even if the perceptual problem was to be solved, there are still other challenges that need to be solved in order to effectively provide assistance to the elderly, the disabled, or other humans. These problems include security and fault tolerance. Computer network security would need to be significantly addressed so as to reduce the potential harm to humans due to unauthorized use. Informational security to protect personal information would also be of high concern. Fault tolerance, which manifests itself as errors or lack of perception, would need to be addressed for the robot to be useful. Fault tolerance is also important, since the robot could potentially cause harm to people or get stuck without knowing how to complete the task.